GWS 2019 - Scale versus Style
In Jasper’s GWS 2019 Size Matters post, Jan Bruinen asks,
Is there a combination in the survey between figure scale and scale of game and the trends? So more 28mm skirmishes, the smaller scales for the big battles etc?
Jan asks a good question. One that is not so easily answered by the survey results as will be seen shortly.
The survey questions relating to figure size preferences (Question 14) and gaming style preferences (Question 8) allow for multiple responses. That is, a respondent may choose from none up to all of the defined categories. There is no assignment to ranking these preferences unless the respondent makes a single choice for each question. Do survey respondents typically make more than one choice for each of these questions? Yes, they do!
When considering response to preferred figure scales/sizes, almost 50% of all respondents pick three figure scales. Only about 1 in 12 respondents stick to a single figure scale response.
Do we see a similar pattern with respect to gaming style preferences? Again, yes we do. Less than 3% of respondents select a single gaming style preference. Nearly 70% of respondents select between 3 and 5 preferred gaming styles.
Given that respondents may choose multiple preferred figure scales and multiple preferred gaming styles, does any meaningful pattern emerge from tabulating these many-to-many relationships?
Examining the table below, patterns do emerge.
For all but 02-03mm figures, Skirmish-style and Scenario-driven gaming are #1 and #2 in the rankings. For 06mm-20mm, the Top 4 rankings are the same across these figure scales. For 25mm and above, the Top 4 rankings are the same across these figure scales asa well. The difference between these two groupings is interesting. The smaller (non-02-03mm) figure scale gamers rank Big battles over Campaign-driven gaming. For the larger figure scale gamers, this relationship is reversed with Campaign-drive taking a higher preference over Big battles.
Are these relationships between figure scale and gaming style meaningful? You decide.
Perhaps these two questions can be amended in future surveys to allow for a ranking of figure scale and gaming style preferences?